The Khronos Group has announced the immediate availability of Vulkan 1.0, a royalty-free open standard API specification. Vulkan has been in the making for 18 months, and is designed to provide high-efficiency, cross-platform access to graphics and compute on modern GPUs used in a wide variety of devices such as PCs, consoles, mobile phones and … continue reading
Google has released a new API designed to retrieve data from an authenticated user’s Contacts. Previously, developers had to make multiple calls to the Google+ API and Contacts API. The new People API is designed to provide developers with new protocols and technologies, and it aims to eventually replace the Contacts API. With the People … continue reading
Google wants to improve the overall app development experience in Android Studio. The company has announced a 2.0 beta release of the official Android IDE that provides performance and emulator speed enhancements. “Android Studio 2.0 is a big release, and now is a good time to check out the beta release to incorporate the new … continue reading
JetBrains has announced the 1.0 release candidate of its statically typed programming language for the JVM, Android and browsers: Kotlin. The language is designed to reduce the amount of code developers need to write; avoid entire classes or errors; provide versatility; leverage existing frameworks and libraries with 100% Java Interoperability; and support command-line compilers or … continue reading
Add native power to your shared JavaScript codebase with this Apache Cordova plug-in that’s available on GitHub (and is also SD Times GitHub project of the week): Project Ace. Project Ace enables you to easily add native UI and native code to your JavaScript and HTML. It works with Ionic, PhoneGap and all Cordova-based projects. … continue reading
A slideshow that describes “The State of Go” was created to show where the programming language is as of February 2016. Some highlights include all of the Go releases. Go 1.4 is one year old, Go 1.6’s release candidate was released on Jan. 28, and Go 1.6 will be released sometime this month. Most of … continue reading
Google wants to make sure developers are looking after their users’ data in their Android 6.0 Marshmallow apps. The company has provided some key best practices it believes developers should aim for when building their apps and keeping user trust in mind. “Marshmallow introduced several changes that were designed to help your app look after … continue reading
Android may be the last great untapped platform in mobile. While Apple recently bragged of a spike in Android-to-Apple user conversions, the fact remains that Google’s operating system had 1 billion to Apple’s 800 million users in 2014. Android is also the choice operating system in emerging markets, like India, which are believed to be … continue reading
Microsoft has submitted a pull request to the Node.js mainline in order to enable it to work with Microsoft’s recently open-sourced ChakraCore. According to Microsoft, the open-sourcing of ChakraCore helps the technology better align with Node.js release schedules. The pull request would allow Node.js to use the ChakraCore JavaScript engine, and to enable Node.js developers … continue reading
Minecraft is billed as being for exploring and building, but Microsoft wants kids exploring places in the real world, like the Pyramids of Giza or ancient temples. This is why Microsoft announced Minecraft: Education Edition, which is a new version that is customized for schools. The new title will be available as a free trial … continue reading
Humans are constantly engaged in sound, and with mobile devices and virtual reality headsets becoming increasingly popular, sound is becoming more immersive. Today, the Cardboard SDKs for Android and Unity support spatial audio so developers can create immersive audio experiences in virtual reality apps, according to Nathan Martz, product manager for Google Cardboard. Users will … continue reading
In an effort to save its smartphone business, BlackBerry is abandoning its mobile operating system BlackBerry 10 (BB10) in favor of Android this year. CNET reported the company’s CEO John Chen confirmed that it will release at least one new phone next year, and it will be powered by Google’s operating system. The company made … continue reading
